5 Things That Won't Appear in Wolverine 3

Evan Valentine

02/17/2016

Deadpool has changed the game. With the recent announcement that Wolverine 3 is aiming for an “R” rating, it would seem that an age of edgier comic book heroes is dashing across the horizon. X-Force is an inevitability at this point, along with a Deadpool sequel, yet details about the third, and potentially final, Wolverine movie are few and infrequent. Reports, and Hugh Jackman himself, have hinted at the idea that this third movie will loosely follow the plot of the comic book storyline from writer of Marvel’s Civil War, Mark Millar, entitled “Old Man Logan”. The storyline finds Wolverine far in the future, having hung up his costume and put away his claws to raise a family on barren farmland. His “landlords” however send Logan on a suicide mission to save his wife and children, eventually forcing the tired, broken mutant to become the man he once was.

There are many things that could take place in the final Wolverine movie of the trilogy, but there are also many things which took place in the “Old Man Logan” series that could not. This storyline in the comics is not just entrenched in X-Men mythology, but overall Marvel lore as well. Surely, if this is the inspiration for the finale, things will need to be shaken up a bit to hold onto similar story beats. With that being said, here are our 5 choices for characters and scenes that couldn’t possibly make an appearance in Wolverine 3.

Venom, The Last Dinosaur

Just to get you acquainted with how bonkers this storyline actually is, Old Man Logan has a scene wherein a giant Tyrannosaurs Rex, possessed by a symbiote, chases down Logan as he travels across the countryside. To give you some backstory on how this can possibly exist, the fall of Wolverine and the Marvel heroes that led to these events gave way to a United States of America that was carved into pieces, ruled by different super villains. Ultron got his own section, Dr. Doom did, and the Red Skull got Washington DC, draped in the costume of his slain enemy, Captain America. Dinosaurs and aliens roam the countryside, and sometimes fuse together, as is the case with a symbiote latching onto this giant dinosaur.

Sony is already loaning out Spider-Man, and most likely his supporting characters and villains, to Marvel Studios, so I don’t really see them doing the same for a Wolverine sequel. Not to say we couldn’t see a big old T-Rex appear in this sequel as the Savage Land is a big old piece of X-lore that has yet to appear in the X-Men films proper.

Old Man Logan's Origin

I’m not just saying this because they couldn’t use the villains currently owned by Marvel Studios, and the Spidey villains over at Sony, I’m saying this because having a finale that sees Wolverine horribly butchering his friends and family within the X-Mansion. Fox is starting an entirely new franchise not only with Deadpool and possibly X-Force, but X-Men Apocalypse is introducing younger versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Nightcrawler who will most likely make up the new team of characters called “New Mutants”, which has already been greenlit. I doubt we’d have a movie where Wolverine off’ed all of them himself, even if it got a hard R rating. Also of course, touching upon my original point, Mysterio and other Marvel villains outside of the X-sphere are responsible for Wolverine’s berserker barrage and they couldn’t appear in the film.

I think with Old Man Logan, we’ll still get a good number of scenes from the original story, they’ll just have to involve characters under the Fox umbrella. Logan could still undergo a terrible tragedy at the hands of some X-villains, but the idea of Wolverine butchering everyone in the mansion is a bit too dark for the crescendo on Hugh Jackman’s story.

The Odd Couple

Wolverine is joined on his journey, and set on its path, by the Avenger Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye. While the details of the mission are shrouded in mystery to start, Barton eventually reveals that he’s attempting to not only collect a paycheck, but to start a new team of Avengers. Things of course go to pot and Hawkeye is unfortunately killed for his effort, but the two have an amazing repertoire during their travels. Hawkeye is currently an integral part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as one of the core members of the Avengers, having a significant role in the recent Avengers: Age of Ultron and appearing in footage for Captain America: Civil War. Clint Barton is staying put, but this doesn’t have to mean that Old Man Logan is a solo venture.

To be honest, I think you could put good old Scott Summers into the place of Hawkeye here and the result would be the same. In fact, it would be a bit more ironic as Clint was blind in this storyline, and if that were the same fate to befall Cyclops, that would be a nice twist of events.

The Background

There was so much crazy stuff that happened in this storyline that was so rooted in the Marvel Universe that we won’t see. The Spider-Mobile. The Ghost Riders. The Moloids. Loki’s giant corpse left in the sun. Again, as I had previously stated, these are all things that could be replaced with equally amazing visuals from X-characters or scenarios, but these specifically don’t have a shot of being included in the final Hugh Jackman vehicle.

I think that one of the strongest aspects of Old Man Logan was how commonplace all this insanity seemed, how society and its citizens had simply gotten used to living life under the iron fists of super villain tyranny. This is certainly a theme that could be brought into Wolverine 3 with villains such as Magneto, Apocalypse, and Sabretooth to name a few.

Slide 5/5

The Hulk's Inbred Hillbilly Family

Could you even imagine? Even if Fox and Marvel got along like brothers, there would be approximately zero chance that we’d see the villains of the movie be the offspring of Bruce Banner and his cousin Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk. While this final showdown worked well for the comics, with Wolverine and the Hulk’s histories being so entwined, you would NEVER see Disney introducing one of their beloved Avengers in this light.

It’s really a shame that more than likely we’ll never see Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk go to war with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, as that would honestly make for the perfect swan song for the character of Logan. With Old Man Logan, Hulk and his spawn acted as the main antagonists in a sea of villains, so this will have to be a huge change for the movie and go with a different driving force behind Old Man Logan’s journeys.